Unreachable Destiny- The Curse Of Your Love

Chapter-14: The Intimidating Woman

Maya, who never had to shop for Indian clothes, browses through the clothes in the store with no idea what dress she is supposed to buy. Ranav watches her tensely moving clothes around with amusement and wishes he had popcorn to sit and enjoy the show. The salesman brings another set of clothes for her to choose from and Maya grows tired just looking at the bundle. She haphazardly throws the dress in her hands down into the pile and signs. Ranav finally takes pity on her poor soul and steps forward to help her.

"Just looking through them won't do." He says as he starts picking up a few clothes in various colours. Maya gives him the side eye.

"Don't tell me you're going to choose my clothes, Mister." She says looking at his U-neck T-shirt with full sleeves and his faded pair of dark blue jeans. Ignoring the fact that the guy actually looks good in it, that outfit is not considered fashion.

"Don't judge me, Madam. Contrary to what I usually wear, I do have a decent sense of fashion. My mother has a great style and watching her pick out clothes for hours, I picked up some skills too. Let me help or else we won't be leaving today." Maya nods reluctantly because she knows that she does not know a thing about Indian clothing apart from what she saw in Indian movies. Ranav immediately gets to work by pulling out one dress from every colour. He extended his arm in front of Maya, urging her to join him. She stares at his outstretched hand, not knowing how to react. They barely met two times prior to this shopping spree and he is behaving like they have known each other all their life. Before she could say anything, he took her hand in his, bending down, as she remained dumbfounded with their proximity.

"Now, let us find out what colour and model of dress suits you the best." Ranav smiles cheerfully. She could swear at that moment that she had never seen a man smile so warmly at her except her father and probably her brother, Amish. Aditya is a playful guy so she could never expect something so warm from him and Akshay's expressions are something else. They put her on edge with feelings she could not voice. She can imagine being good friends with Ranav because she is more comfortable with him than most of the other people in her life that she has known for a while.

"Which one?" Maya asks, pulling up a smile of her own. She may not have noticed it but Ranav relaxed inwardly as he finally saw her smile. Why her expressions mattered to him so much, is a question left to fate. As he put each dress in front of her in the mirror, Maya couldn't help but ease up at his sweet gesture.

"That one!" Maya says with an impossible eagerness in her voice.

"I knew it!" He says with excitement right back.

***

After getting everything needed, the packages were loaded into Kuhu's car and since there was no more space left it was decided that Maya and Aditya would ride in Ranav's car. Maya sat in the front as she was feeling a little dizzy while Aditya started ranting from the back. If it wasn't for Ranav sitting beside her, she would have disciplined Aditya well with a knock to his head. Fifteen minutes into the journey, Maya gets a call from Akshay asking whether they'd be up for a trip to Kothariya and Maya reluctantly agrees as Aditya barely contains his excitement.

"What happened to the one who's so tired that he can barely manage to breathe?" Maya says as soon as she hangs up.

"Which is why I need to recharge and what better place to recharge than an out-of-the-world experience in an Indian temple?"

"Talk for yourself. I have more work to deal with once I get home so I'd rather go home early."

"Work always. I mean I know you've always been like this but I really expected you to loosen up a bit after coming here but turned out once a workaholic, always a workaholic."